Not so serious, bite-sized articles providing information and insights into using technology in online and hybrid courses. These articles explore new and emerging technologies, pedagogy, instructional design, technology management, web accessibility, and design of assessments. This site is meant to help you become more aware of the possibilities and to spark your creativity. Laugh a little with this "light reading." Published when you least suspect it! Email: jamesfalkofske[at]yahoo[dot]com

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

I was helping to migrate webpages for our campus website. For security reasons, we were temporarily doing away with an online forms-registration system and replacing it with a simple "email" which contained the necessary information. Well... making sure that the email contained all the needed information was a dice-shoot, so I stumbled upon a site which helps you generate a complex HTML mailto: tag - so that the body of the email is pre-filled with certain information. The website I used was http://www.cha4mot.com/t_mailto.htmlIt has a simple interface with options for TO:, CC:, BCC:, SUBJECT, and BODY. Great find!

Monday, July 27, 2009

If you need to explain to students how to turn on "Track Changes" in a Word document, or to print PowerPoint slides as "handouts" (rather than one per page), or how to navigate an online website or database, sometimes "showing" works much better than "telling."

ScreenJelly.com is a website that allows you to create "show & tell" videos. Whatever is on your screen can get recorded into a Flash-based video. Link to the video or embed it in your courses or blog sites.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Two professors at the University of Westminster in London have completed research which shows that face-to-face communications in classes can be made more efficient when supplemented by surveys and blogs.

The professors provided surveys after tests and assignments to get feedback from students. Students also post entries to online blogs about these assessments; the listings are then read by tutors who reply back to the student. Tutors are using RSS feeds to aggregate the blog postings, and this allows quicker individualized feedback to students. In the student, each student was assigned a specific tutor for the course (which allows the student to build a relationship with that tutor).

The communication processes are made more efficient while still providing the face-to-face contact that the students expect.

As reported at InsideHigherEd.com, the Federal Education Department is planning a program to provide Federal funds to community colleges and high schools who are willing to create free, online courses. Part of the effort would be to support job training programs.

Colleges which participate would be responsible for tracking and reporting on student progress and outcomes, including employment-related outcomes.

Creating high quality online courses will enhance opportunities for learners in rural areas as well as those who are under-employed (and seeking career advancement). I am hopeful that these initiatives to offer free online courses will shift the pricing model of online deliver from one of premium/luxury pricing to one of "self-service/discount" pricing. Too few institutions are using strategic design and economies of scale to deliver skills and knowledge. After all -- how different is the course College Algebra from state-to-state and from institution-to-institution? Rather than having each institution re-invent the wheel, creating highly engaging content which receives ongoing and thorough peer review will lead to more consistent outcomes among learners.

Once the curriculum for the free courses is developed, the next vital step is to ensure they are being taught by highly talented and engaging faculty members who will provide the needed guidance, personalized feedback, and careful assessment which students need to be successful in their online learning environments.

Use the arrow keys in the bottom of the screen to navigate, or simply click your mouse on an object and use the mouse scroll-wheel to zoom in or out of objects.

The site provides 100MB of file storage at no cost (text is very tiny of course), and full year licenses are $39Euro for 500MB and $119Euro for 2GB of space. Even with the free site you can download your presentation to a ZIP package which has an Adobe Flash application (so you can off-load your content even if the site goes out-of-business).

Since it is a free tool – it would be useful for faculty and students alike.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Martin Catt posted a great DIY article on how to create your own video lights out of aluminum cake pans. The advantage of the cake pans is that they can be grounded for safety. Also - they are light weight for easy mounting to light stands.

Richard Wright demonstrates how to rebuild "brooder" style clamp lights into video lights which can mount to traditional light stands.

Friday, July 17, 2009

I just replied to a Facebook question about the online / hybrid / face-to-face modes of teaching.

For those of us who grew up with computers from an early age, we just expect to have the information and resources available on-demand.

Online course sites will become a "utility" in the same way that we expect to have electricity to turn on the lights. It is something that all users will expect to be there - and the control will be more in their hands whether they want to "flip the switch" or not. Just like electricity - they will consume online course sites at different times and rates based on personal preferences -- and they will become instantly frustrated when they are missing or inaccessible. (Ever attempt a PowerPoint presentation with a blown-out bulb in the LCD projector? Multiply times 30 students in a section.)

We're over-thinking the questions relating to online education. There has always been distance education; the only things that have changed are the tools we use to accomplish the task. I think that the "trinity" is actually "on-site / off-site / independent." Instructors who are not willing to support the service of Online Course sites are basically removing the fuse and ensuring their students sit in the "virtual" darkness.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

I found a presentation by Joshua Coupal on Prezi.com which explains Bloom's taxonomy of learning as it relates to the digital classroom. If you haven't yet seen Prezi.com - it is a free way to create dynamic and interactive presentations (rather than the same old PowerPoints).

Joshua Coupal created a great presentation which also demonstrates extremely well how Prezi.com might be used.

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About Me

Technology geek since the age of 8 (using a TRS-80 computer that saved to audio cassettes - poorly, by the way), I enjoy exploring new uses of audio, images, and video in education and training. A bit of a work-a-holic because I love what I do.